n Kabara we ought to go on down to
Dakar and suggest she be given another assignment for a while. Some of
the girls, working out of our AFAA office don't do anything except drive
around in recent model cars, showing off the advantages of emancipation,
tossing money around like tourists, and living it up in general."

* * * * *

On the flight up-river to Kabara, Isobel Cunningham went through the
notes she'd taken on that town. It was also on the Niger, and the
assignment had been almost identical to the Gao one. In fact, she'd gone
through the same routine in Segou, Ke-Macina, Mopti, Goundam and Bourem,
above Gao, and Ansongo, Tillaberi and Niamey below. She was stretching
her luck, if you asked her. Sooner or later she was going to run into
someone who knew her from a past performance.

Well, let the future take care of the future. She looked over at Cliff
Jackson who was piloting the jet and said, "What're the latest
developments? Obviously, I haven't seen a paper or heard a broadcast for
over a week."

Cliff shrugged his huge shoulders. "Not much. More trouble with the
Portuguese down in the south."

Jake rumbled, "There's going to be a bloodbath there before it's over."

Isobel said thoughtfully, "There's been some hope that fundamental
changes might take place in Lisbon."

Jake grunted his skepticism. "In that case the bloodbath would take
place there instead of in Africa." He added, "Which is all right with
me."

"What else?" Isobel said.

"Continued complications in the Congo."

"That's hardly news."

"But things are going like clockwork in the west. Kenya, Uganda,
Tanganyika." Cliff took his right hand away from the controls long
enough to make a circle with its thumb and index finger. "Like
clockwork. Fifty new fellows from the University of Chicago came in last
week to help with the rural education development and twenty or so men
from Johns Hopkins in Baltimore have wrangled a special grant for a new
medical school."

"All ... Negroes?"

"What else?"

Jake said suddenly, "Tell her about the Cubans."

Isobel frowned. "Cubans?"

"Over in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan area. They were supposedly helping
introduce modern sugar refining methods--"

"Why supposedly?"

"Why not?"

"All right, go on," Isobel said.

Cliff Jackson said slowly, "Somebody shot them up. Killed several,
wounded most of the others."

The girl's eyes went round. "Who ... and why?"

The